The Glacier Valley Rotary Club is hosting its 21st Annual Pillars of America Speaker Series. It kicked off this week with its first speaker Shawn Harper, a former NFL Offensive Tackle. We sat in while he was interviewed by Sharon Gaiptman on KINY's Capital Chat where he was asked "Who is Shawn Harper?"

"I actually consider myself an investor; the greatest investment as far as I'm concerned is people, because when you invest in people it has the potential of reaping generations of dividends. Basically I like to plant seeds under which the shade trees I will never sit.

Another one of my slogans is that you can often count the number of seeds in an orange, but you never can count the number of oranges in the seed. I was born and raised with practically insurmountable odds; everyone had written me off, I've had tons, tons of challenges ever since the age of three. All the way up until I begin to change my actual perspective of that from being a victim to a victor.

Victims tend to focus on what they're going through, victors look to what and where they're going to. And I had to change my perspective and once I began to change my perspective and my focus, I changed my life from being basically an underachiever to an overachiever in all aspects, including sports. Not really starting in high school football, or barely starting in high school football and then from there going to a junior college and then to Indiana University and being drafted third pick in the fourth round, playing several years in the NFL, until I reached what I thought and what society thought was the apex.

But just like a fruit tree, then it begins to bear fruit and I said 'You know what, there's probably thousands of other Shawn Harper's out there, millions of Shawn Harper's out there.' And so I've decided to share my fruit and hope enough seeds will plant and germinate in the lives of millions of young people out there."